Church membership was invented to keep track of who can do what in the church. It helps a church judge who is committed to the church.
It sounds good in theory, but unfortunately, church membership has become a tool churches use to manipulate people, in my humble-ish opinion!
Church membership is not in the Bible. Yes, believers are members of the body of Christ, but that’s not the same thing. Verses listed to prove church membership, do not say anything about modern church membership practice.
Church membership typically requires some sort of class, meeting with someone to check out your testimony, and typically requires a person to be baptized.
Church membership is now a number churches track to see how well they are doing. Thus, in order to boost that number, new people are encouraged to “get involved.” In order to “get involved,” a person has to become an official church member.
This also locks in the new person, so they are “forced” to attend church to do their thing they “got involved” in. If the new person is not baptized, many churches use the church membership carrot to manipulate people into baptism.
I find this to be the most troubling part of modern church membership practices.
Churches have a hard time dealing with the fact that if you don’t have any mature believers to do a ministry, then don’t do that ministry. Instead, churches get pumped up to do all their programs and just need warm bodies to fill slots. In order to fill slots, people are rushed through church membership. This misses the entire point of the whole thing!
This also means that many church positions are filled by new believers, or at least new people in the church who the church has no idea who they really are, but hey, go watch these stranger’s kids for an hour since child molesting has never been a problem in churches before.
Obviously you can read my cynicism on the issue quite clearly.
The reason New Testament churches didn’t do official church membership is probably because churches were smaller. You knew the people better. There was also probably more cost to attend since persecution was more prevalent. Only serious people would even bother showing up.
In the little church I was pastor of for 21 years, we did not have church membership. I knew who came, so did anyone else who came. I knew them, they knew me. No relative strangers were plopped into positions of leadership in the church. The elders and deacons of the church paid attention and asked the people who they felt were ready to go do things.
I think that’s the NT model.
Church membership is fine if you want to do it as it’s also not forbidden in the Bible. Go for it. Don’t try to prove it’s a biblical concept though, just do it and say you feel this is the best way for your church in its present shape to do things.
But avoid the trap of making Church Membership this big thing that you rush people into. Don’t use it to manipulate people into being baptized.
If your church does church membership, examine the place it has. How is the church using it? Are people getting baptized because they are identifying with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or are they jumping through a hoop so they can do a thing in the church? Is it just a non-helpful formality at this point, or is it actually achieving its purpose?
I’m not saying not to do church membership. I am saying churches should think about what it truly is and how it’s being used and implemented.
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Failing Pastor 